Air raid drills were concocted by the federal government in 1952 through the National Civil Defense Administration to protect people from incoming A-bombs. Common folk-wisdom said only cockroaches would survive a nuclear attack. Nevertheless teachers were required to conduct impromptu air raid drills. They shouted, Drop!—a signal for school kids to jump out of their seats, crawl under their desks, fall over their knees and cover their heads. The nuns in my school added the instruction to recite Hail Marys aloud while on the floor.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
At seven, I didn’t understand the difference between a drill and the real event. I went to my death every time I huddled under that desk. I feared the A-Bomb was the worst thing that could ever happen. But. I was not. afraid. to die.
This is it, I’d pray. This is the day I’m going to see Jesus.
I believed Mother Mary would grab me in her arms like she did baby Jesus and take me to heaven. I questioned why we practiced avoiding such ecstasy.
By the time third grade rolled around, I got used to not dying under the desk. Images of children who lived after their exposure to the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki appeared on our small black and white television. I saw that there were worse things than death.
New York Times columnist David French, in a NYT: 9/19/2026 podcast “Has Trump Lost Touch with Reality” talks about the AI extinction warning from tech moguls. He reminded us Boomers: “We’re Cold War kids. We know what it’s like to live under the threat of an almost instantaneous extinction-level event…”
Yes we do. And what if these are apocalyptic times? So what? So were the 1950’s. 1960s.1970s. We’ve been here before.
David French is too young to have experienced the PTSD-inducing Drop-and-Cover operation of American school children. In the decades after this fright, those of us who sought professional help for our adult nameless fears, were told about the trauma of having to protect ourselves from mass extinction as first graders. That line of psychology went out of favor around the time of the 1980s “Me” generation when self-realization replaced external influences on our mental health. The idea of being a victim of our circumstances became so uncool. David French, a self-actualized man, certainly has standing as a Cold War kid though. He’s lived through and reported on the threat of a nuclear holocaust.
For Boomers, social psychologists suggest those early childhood extinction threats entombed in our memories, have inoculated us against responding hysterically to the mau-mauing of present-day AI apocalyptic fearmongers.
For non-inoculated GenX, Millennials, GenY, GenZ, GenAlpha, and GenBeta, Mother Mary and Jesus may have gone by the wayside as comfort to those frightened in the AI era. The great search is on for human leaders, political heroes who will save us from robots and cyber agents killing us off.
Where are they?
